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Greenhouse Gas Rule Delayed

To the surprise of almost no one, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed on Thursday that it would not meet a Sept. 30 deadline for issuing rules governing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other major sources.

Associated PressThe coal-fired Four Corners power plant near Fruitland, N.M.

The agency had been under court order to present proposed rules for limiting such emissions by the end of the month but has negotiated an extension while it wrestles with the complex technical and economic issues raised by the proposal.

An E.P.A. official said that a new timetable for issuing the regulations would be forthcoming “soon.” He said that the decision to delay the proposed rule was driven by agency considerations and not by political pressure from the White House.

The idea of strict limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases from power plants and refineries terrifies many in the utility, manufacturing and oil and gas industries, who fear it will drive up energy costs and force the retirement of some older but still-profitable operations.
Republicans in Congress characterize the proposed regulation as a job killer and are trying to throttle it. Business lobbyists have leaned hard on the White House to delay or modify it. The Republican presidential candidates are universally against regulating greenhouse gases, in some cases because they dispute the notion that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is a pollutant that is contributing to the warming of the planet.

The E.P.A. and its supporters argue that the government is compelled to act to limit emissions by the inexorable science of climate change and by the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling that the agency must regulate such emissions if it finds they are a threat to human health and the environment. The E.P.A. issued such a finding in 2009.

Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the most outspoken climate-change skeptic in Congress, welcomed the delay, calling it one of the E.P.A.’s most economically damaging rules.

“This announcement, as well as President Obama’s recent request that E.P.A. withdraw the ozone standard, makes one thing clear: not only will E.P.A.’s barrage of regulations cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs, they may cost President Obama his own job, and he knows it all too well,” Mr. Inhofe said. “That’s why he is punting on a number of them until after the 2012 election.”

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